Evangelism is probably the most difficult area of the Christian life.
I say that even though, for the last 25 years, I’ve worked as a full-time evangelist for a church in the Philadelphia area. With the culture growing increasingly hostile to Christianity, it’s much easier to avoid this awkward calling, to give in to fear and keep the good news to ourselves.
This pressure results in many churches adding members almost exclusively through transfer growth (Christians leaving one church for another), as opposed to conversion growth (non-Christians coming to Christ). We know that God wants the church to reach the lost, but how can we change?
Encouragement from Paul
Paul gives us one way in Ephesians 4: prioritize the role of an evangelist.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves
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